Saturday, December 16, 2006

Political Science Part. 0.125

I think we're all obligated to be gestalt idealists regarding world affairs. World peace, one love, imagine.mp3. Actually, I like possessions, for example my John Lennon CDs, but anyway. If we have any friends who do not share the basic ideals we should be careful to put other friends before them. Anyway again, the way to achieve these goals is through ruthless shrewdness, niggardly politiking, and good PR work. My right wing friends seem to share my ideals (ergo they're not bad people) but misunderstand how to get things done. As a short softie with a penchant for drunkenly hurling racial epithets at exactly the wrong people but who has never, ever gotten off anything other than unscathed (not to mention other things) I feel more qualified than the average 21-year old about talking my way out of difficult situations. Heavy-handed threats of violence do nothing to inspire confidence, much less admiration. Violence itself is as empty as threats when you're dealing with hundreds of sovereign nations that think your neurons fire slower than theirs because you were violent. The neo-cons knew less about the world than Rob Babcock knew about Alonzo Mourning, and Bill Kristol's pontifications, though good for erections, are tough to trust when he's been consistently wrong for years. I hope Kristol, David Horowitz, Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld, Jeane Kirkpatrick and the rest of their ilk are happy knowing that they'll be recorded in history as vainglorious failures whose poor judgement helped cause hundreds of thousands of deaths. The only joy in watching their policies fail is knowing that, unlike the enemies in Dylan's "Hurricane" they will live to see in their martinis reflections of their legacies as followers of the wrong path. Moving right along, the way out of this Western mess is to forge a society of allies. Canada has done a remarkable job of this; we have embassies in Iran and Syria. The United States needs to realize why and how it has a long-standing friendship with Saudi Arabia, and apply this reasoning to every other country that both likes and hates them. Let's not shit ourselves: pragmatism to fulfill idealism.